Form of the Week: Form 3 Explore What A ‘Positive Playground’ Looks Like

Posted on: May 9th 2014

Over the past two weeks, the Form 3 classes have been thinking about the values that the Norfolk House Positive Playground Committee (PPC) has been promoting. This was in connection with our current PSHE topic about friendship and how to get along with others. The children were so interested and enthusiastic about the ideas discussed that they wanted to share their thoughts and suggestions with the rest of the school.

In class, the children were organised into small groups and they worked collaboratively to list all of the factors that need to be considered and included to achieve a ‘Positive Playground.’ They discussed the importance of sharing both space and equipment, respecting others, caring for those who might be hurt, trying to address and solve issues without adult intervention and generally showing good sporting behaviour.

Each group decided on a scenario that they wanted to focus on and these ranged from inclusion of others to the fair allocation of play equipment. Their task was then to act out and freeze frame in two or three shots that would show how to approach their particular situation in a positive manner.

The pictures taken, along with accompanying annotations, would show the rest of the school what a ‘Positive Playground’ looked like:

Below you can see that two pupils have noticed that two other children are not happy as they don’t agree on what is happening in their game.

The girls suggest that the boys should play ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ in an attempt to resolve their issue in a fair and friendly manner.

This strategy has been successful and now all four of the children happily play together.

In this picture, the children are showing that they all want to play with the ball.

The child who gets to the ball first is thrilled! The rest of the children are not so happy…

The children agree that the best option is for all of them to play together.

This picture depicts a child standing up for her friend and persuading two other children to let him join their game. She is smiling in a friendly manner and one of the other children is kindly beckoning him to come and play.

Here three children are caring for a boy who has hurt himself during their game.

In this final picture, you can see three children are also helping a boy up after he fell and hurt himself. They then take him to the teacher to receive first aid.

The children then wrote and typed up some short explanatory pieces of writing and speech bubbles to go with their pictures to show what each of the members of their group was saying. The finished project is currently on display outside the Form 3 and Form 5 classrooms so please have a look if you are passing by and remember to follow Form 3’s lead and try your best to be positive and helpful when playing together outside.